Hon Minister and guests, we know the tourism sector is a big job creator. It's where chefs, waiters, cleaners, barmen, tour guide operators and many taxi cab drivers get their jobs. I think that my colleague, the hon Manny De Freitas has explained succinctly. This is why the DA is carefully watching the motives that you propose, when you propose the 'kill Airbnb' Bill, cloak named the Draft Tourism Amendment Bill.
Why do you want to kill Airbnb when the company delivers innovation? Why do you want to kill Airbnb when they actually level the playing fields and creates jobs and new wealth to help
the small players? Who are you working for when you want to kill Airbnb? It is certainly not for the small guesthouse owner, the cook at the bed and breakfast who waited years to get a job. It is not for the cleaner at the small boutique hotel who feeds her entire family from their job.
Have you ever personally used Airbnb yourself or the hon Deputy Minister or even any other booking portal such as booking.com? Or is it only luxury five-star hotels that you use? [Interjections.] [Applause.] Minister, in your hunger to kill Airbnb, we will stand up against you and defend the hundreds of thousands of jobs you also plan to destroy in the process. [Applause.]
This brings me to my second urgent matter, which is the cost of grading places of accommodation and the structure of the grading council. It is simply wrong that it costs on average R5 200 to have a star grading for a place or behind a guest houses name. Imagine that you have a young entrepreneur in some of these dorpies - that the chairperson of the portfolio committee - who has a home and wants to start our small guest house and lodge or
Inn, always with very little money, in their pocket. This government should not be burdened them with that cost annually.
Such high costs do nothing for inclusion, empowerment and new business. It does nothing to level the playing fields and create new jobs. We need to move to a system of free grading, especially for small businesses, so that they may receive the benefits that are associated and come from grading.
Ultimately, we can create new businesses and jobs in the tourism industry but we need suitable regulation and not make the playing fields even more uneven. Where we govern, in the Western Cape, our policies do exactly that. [Interjections.] One in ten employees in the Western Cape works in the tourism industry. It contributes more than R25 billion to the provincial economy. So, hon Minister, we won't let you kill jobs in this industry. Thank you.